Conducting a Content Audit
Sometimes you need to look back, to move forwards
A content audit is the process of reviewing your website’s existing content to identify what should be deleted, what could be refreshed or improved, and also what can be added as well as what’s missing.
Understanding what’s working and what’s not can give you valuable insights that will shape your future planning content planning. This relates to both content on the website and the type of content you are putting out on your social channels. These are the shop fronts to your public, so, it has to be right.
When is the right time to conduct an audit?
Things to consider in order to make a wise decision about when to conduct your content audit are how often do you publish? How fast is your industry evolving? Have you made major changes to your business model since your last audit? It is important to highlight any new services or products and to remove anything that you no longer offer.
Depending on your business it would be normal practice to have an annual review, tied in with your content strategy for that year.
What are the benefits of a Content Audit?
An important reason to consider completing a content audit is that it will make you consider the important SEO factor ‘Crawl Budget’, which refers to how much attention your site will get from website search crawlers. Basically, the more pages you have, the more crawl budget you require for those pages to be indexed and crawled by Google after they are published. If the number of pages exceeds your site’s crawl budget, you’re going to have pages on your site that aren’t indexed. It’s not something to worry about if you have a smaller website (1000 URLs or less), but on big sites with many thousands of pages, like ecommerce sites, it does become a factor.
Aside from keeping Google happy, good quality content builds trust and drives better conversion rates.You don’t need to Sometimes information can be refreshed or expanded on, turning a poor-quality, piece of content into something of high value.
Is your content mobile friendly?
You should also consider whether your content is optimised for mobile as this is a key ranking and usability factor.
Identify out of date content
Information, statistics, and studies become out of date quickly these days, especially if you’re in an industry that’s rapidly evolving. If some of your content is no longer up to date and accurate, you don’t always have to delete those pages from your site you may be able to simply update some of the content.
Consistent messaging & tone of voice
Consistent messaging and tone of voice helps people trust, and feel a connection with, your brand, they feel like they understand the personality of the brand and what you stand for. Completing a content audit will help you assess the consistency of content which may have been created across many years, by different personnel, at different stages of the brand’s evolution.